Integration Solution:
In the past few years, enterprise software providers have turned their sights to midsized companies. Companies like SAP, Oracle, salesforce.com, and RightNow have created versions for midsized businesses and are currently seeing strong growth in the adoption of these systems. AMI-Partners, an industry research group, explains that driving this growth will be the continued demand for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions as midsized businesses aim to get the same operational and analytical benefits as the larger companies have enjoyed. In addition, “On-demand” or “Software as a-Service” solutions, such as those offered by salesforce.com, are gaining traction among midsized businesses.
This trend will likely help midsized businesses gain important abilities, but there remains one huge problem – the benefits of enterprise applications can only be realized when those applications are fully integrated. Two (or more) applications must be able to share data and business rules seamlessly, in real time, with reliable performance and scalability. For example, a field sales representative can learn that the customer he’s been spending time selling to has not paid his bills and is on “credit-hold” in the billing system. Or, manufacturing and materials management groups can gain early visibility of a coming, downstream surge in orders and use this information to adjust production schedules.
Integration is a top priority for companies. A survey by Baseline magazine conducted in 2007 showed that business process improvement is the number one priority among CIOs and other technology business leaders. Companies that can integrate their applications are going a long way toward improving their business processes, because most processes cross functional lines naturally. In an earlier Baseline survey, application integration was number one on the list of top five projects, ranked by average planned spending. In that survey, application integration ranked ahead of business analytics, enterprise portals, CRM, and intrusion detection and prevention.
The overwhelming majority of application integration needs in midsized businesses are straightforward: move data from one application or database to another according to set business rules. Some especially messy integration problems will always exist, and these problems will require the use of sophisticated and custom tools. However, most integration projects are relatively simple. Does it make sense, then, to invest in a NASCAR effort when a Camry will do? Probably not. More likely is that technical managers want a technology that takes care of the vast number of straightforward integration projects in a quick, simple, and cost-effective manner. A technology that completes integration in days, rather than months, and that will quickly give businesses the full benefit of an integrated enterprise.
Doing Application Integration – Three Choices
There are three ways to integrate applications. First, through Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) tools. Second, through custom coding. The third is through integration appliances, which are relatively new to the market, and – for many midsized businesses – have already overcome the challenges and barriers of the first two approaches. Let’s look at each.
EAI and ETL Tools – Like Using a Chainsaw to Open a Letter
EAI tools were designed to create elaborate frameworks for integrating dozens to hundreds of applications. Companies have found they are good approaches to addressing complex, business process initiatives such as BPM (business process management), BAM (business activity monitoring) and an Enterprise backbone. ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) tools support massive volume transactions and very complex data manipulations, such as you might find in big data warehousing solutions. Both of these approaches require heavy lifting by many skilled programmers, long delivery times, and high budgets.
Interestingly, most integration projects do NOT have the characteristics described above. According to Gartner application platform research, only 10% of all integration projects fall into this category. Most midsized businesses are not implementing huge data warehouses, nor do they need to integrate the hundreds of stand-alone applications for which EAI was designed. Most midsized businesses need to integrate fewer than 10 applications. Using EAI tools for these kinds of integrations is like using a chainsaw to open a letter: Too much overhead and time required for the task, which prevents positive payback.
